Letters

I was recently disappointed to hear two local women standing inside a local gasoline station, complaining in bigoted fashion regarding people of Arabic descent, saying in particular a local family should be driven out, their children not allowed to attend school.

How sad it was to see that kind of ignorance manifest itself in our little town. Americans come in all varieties. Unless one is a Native American, we all came from somewhere else at some point in our heritage.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols conspired to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City, yet our reaction was not to drive from our midst every red-neck white boy with a dislike for Washington, D.C. This is a time to come together as Americans, of all colors, creeds and religions, and realize our common enemies are hatred and ignorance.

Vickie L. Shoemaker,

Tonganoxie.

Gone too far

To the editor:

On Oct. 9 or 10, an MSNBC commentator, Chris Matthews of "Hardball," made the remark, "Are we having the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan do our dirty work?" This is a slap in the face to the men and women risking their lives in order to allow him to sit there freely to shoot off his mouth. Then on Oct. 12, on the Don Imus talk show, Matthews ridiculed the president by saying he ran out of words mid-speech after the news conference the president had on Oct. 11. Then Matthews proceeded to turn on reporters and editors, saying they were praising Bush, although these same people a month ago were saying he wasn't smart enough to be president. Matthews continued by saying, "This is the same guy, he hasn't changed." He spouts more ridicule by laughing at the president's remark that the Taliban will have to be smoked out of their caves, Bush making it sound as if we are fighting a Flintstone's era war. Perhaps Matthews isn't "smart" enough to know that the Taliban does live in caves and we do have to smoke them out. I feel that Chris Matthews owes the president of the United States and our military a public apology immediately!